F R E N C H L I T E R A T U R E ~ 2 ~ CONTENTS 1. INTRODUCTIO N ………………………….. …………………………….. [621681]

FRENCH
LITERATURE

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CONTENTS

1. INTRODUCTIO N ………………………….. ………………………….. ………………………….. ………. 3
2. THE MIDDLE AGES ………………………….. ………………………….. ………………………….. …. 4
2.1. Early Literary Forms ………………………….. ………………………….. ………………………. 4
2.2. Forms of Protest ………………………….. ………………………….. ………………………….. … 5
2.3. Lyric Poetry ………………………….. ………………………….. ………………………….. ………. 7
3. THE 16TH CENTURY ………………………….. ………………………….. ………………………….. .. 8
3.1. Humanism ………………………….. ………………………….. ………………………….. ……….. 8
3.2. Other Trends ………………………….. ………………………….. ………………………….. …….. 9
4. THE 17TH CENTURY ………………………….. ………………………….. ………………………….. 11
4.1. Baroque Period ………………………….. ………………………….. ………………………….. .. 11
4.2. Classical Period ………………………….. ………………………….. ………………………….. .. 12
5. THE 18TH CENTUR Y (AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT) ………………………….. ………………. 15
6. THE 19TH CENTURY ………………………….. ………………………….. ………………………….. 18
6.1. Romanticism ………………………….. ………………………….. ………………………….. …… 18
6.2. Realism ………………………….. ………………………….. ………………………….. ………….. 19
6.3. Naturalism ………………………….. ………………………….. ………………………….. ……… 20
6.4. Parnassians ………………………….. ………………………….. ………………………….. ……. 20
6.5. Symbolist Movement ………………………….. ………………………….. …………………….. 21
7. THE 20TH CENTURY ………………………….. ………………………….. ………………………….. 23
7.1. Belle Epoque ………………………….. ………………………….. ………………………….. …… 23
7.2. Dada and Surrealism ………………………….. ………………………….. ……………………. 24
7.3. Between the World Wars ………………………….. ………………………….. ……………….. 24
7.4. Existentialism ………………………….. ………………………….. ………………………….. …. 25
7.5. Other Postwar Developments ………………………….. ………………………….. …………. 26
7.6. Literary Criticism ………………………….. ………………………….. …………………………. 26
7.7. Contemporary Fiction ………………………….. ………………………….. …………………… 27
BIBLIOGRAPHY ………………………….. ………………………….. ………………………….. ………… 28

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1. INTRODUCTION

French Literature, the literature of France, from the mid -800s until the
present. French literature is considered one of the richest and most varied
national literatures, noted especially for its examination of human society
and the individual’s place with in society. French literature does not include
francophone literature – works written in the French language but
originating in other countries, such as Canada or Senegal.
French literature reflects the cultural and political history of France.
Until the Fr ench Revolution of 1789, France had a social and political system
that was arranged by rank or class, with rules governing how members of
one class interacted with members of another. Every aspect of culture and
society followed a hierarchical structure, i ncluding literary genres and
literary styles. The hierarchy of genres had epic poetry at the top and the
more common prose genres, such as the novel, at the bottom.
The French Revolution, which lasted from 1789 to 1799, was a crucial
time in French histor y, and it signaled a change in the French literary
landscape as well. Conducted in the name of equality and freedom, it brought
a democratic spirit that leveled rank, privilege, and hierarchical order in
government and all other areas of society. Thus, for example, in the early
1800s writers associated with the romanticism movement called for the
abolition of all the literary rules established by the L’Académie Française
(The French Academy), which had been the chief institution of literary
regulation under the old regime.
Since the time of the Revolution, French writing has been characterized
by creative freedom and innovation, culminating in such 20th -century
movements as dada, surrealism, existentialism, theater of the absurd, the
new novel, and postmod ernism. Paradoxically, despite these experiments
and innovations, French literary traditions have endured, as have the values
of the old order. Thus, the inventive and rebellious Albert Camus saw himself
in the tradition of classical novelist Madame de La Fayette, and the 20th –
century exponent of existentialism Jean -Paul Sartre claimed kinship with
17th-century playwright Pierre Corneille.

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2. THE MIDDLE AGES

The medieval period of French literature encompasses nearly six
centuries, more than the remaini ng periods of French literary history
combined. It begins with La séquence de Sainte Eulalie (The Life of Saint
Eulalia), a church song in fourteen couplets that dates from the late 800s.
The era ends with the printing of the complete works of poet Françoi s Villon
in 1489. Much of French medieval literature is sacred in the sense that it
deals with the lives of saints and the church lore of miracles and mysteries.
At the same time, many writers addressed the deeds of French nobility and
kings, as well as th ose of the Crusaders, who fought to recapture the Holy
Land from the Muslims. By focusing on both religious and political subjects,
literature was in harmony with the worldview of the time, which assigned
equal power to church and state.
France’s politic al situation was relatively stable during the Middle Ages,
although after the reign of the emperor Charlemagne ended in 814,
epidemics, famine, and war among the great lords nearly destroyed the
country. The reign of Hugh Capet, which began in 987, brought stability to
France and established a hierarchy with Capet at the top that promised
social and political stability. His descendents led France in the long
campaigns of the Crusades (1096 -1291) and the Hundred Years’ War (1337 –
1453).
The feudal social and political institutions of medieval France were
based on a pact between a lower vassal and a higher lord: The lord gave land
and protection to the vassal in exchange for vows of fidelity and service. The
social and political hierarchy led downward from the king through the dukes
and counts to the lower nobility, bourgeoisie (middle class), and peasants.
This order reflected the medieval view that all of creation emanated
downward from God and the celestial realm to nature and the earthly world.
Literary gen res fell into two competing categories in France during the Middle
Ages. Some genres affirmed the hierarchical social structure, and others
questioned it. Scholastic quests after eternal truths, liturgical dramas on
biblical themes, and epic poems known as chansons de geste all affirmed the
social structure. Courtly literature (cultivated literature written at French
courts) and satirical literature questioned it, although in different ways.

2.1. Early Literary Forms
Scholasticism is the name given to the medieval way of learning and
teaching. It consisted of studying the Bible, the Sententiarum libri quator
(Four Books of Sentences) by 12th -century Italian theologian Peter Lombard,
and other texts considered authoritative. These books revealed sacred trut hs

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~ 5 ~ as they were understood in the medieval world order, and scholastics studied
them by writing commentaries on points they felt the texts resolved
inadequately or did not cover at all.
Liturgical dramas enacted in Latin the stories of Christmas, Easter, the
Ascension, and other biblical events. Performance of these dramas dates
from the beginning of the 10th century. To reach a larger audience these
dramas became more theatrical and were often given in French, beginning
in the 12th century. In addition, performances moved from in front of the
altar to the open space in front of the church. Toward the end of the 12th
century, priests began to mix into the plays comical and even grotesque
elements to represent Hell and the Devil on stage. More sophisticated scenery
represented the Garden of Eden, Jerusalem, and other biblical sites. Le jeu
d'Adam (Adam's Play) and La sainte résurrection (The Holy Resurrection),
both written in the mid -12th century, are two prominent liturgical dramas.
Sacred theatre nearly disappeared during the Hundred Years’ War, but
it was revived in the 15th century in the form of mystery plays. Mystery plays
were based on written texts with an average length of about 20,000 verses,
primarily on subjects from the Bible. They had enormous stage settings and
featured casts of hundreds. The plays often formed part of a larger festival
that celebrated the life of a local patron saint or the founding of a city.
The chansons de geste (songs of great deeds) of the 11th, 12th, and
13th centuries are epic poems that depict the Crusades and wars fought
among the aristocracy. The first and most famous of these was the Chanson
de Roland (1100?; Song of Roland). The Chan son de Roland describes
Charlemagne’s holy war against the Saracens in Spain, his relationships
with his vassals, feudal rivalries within his army, and the martyrdom of the
hero Roland, who according to tradition was Charlemagne’s nephew. About
80 chansons de geste were written, and although their importance declined
after the 13th century, prose versions continued to be written into the 15th
century.

2.2. Forms of Protest
Not all medieval writings accepted the established social order in
medieval France. Courtly literature protested against the restrictions of the
feudal system and its values, and satirical literature exposed that system’s
dark side. Courtly literature examined the social and personal consequences
of a system that fostered arranged marria ges and advocated the submission
of the individual to higher forces and beings. Satirical literature expressed
with realism, humor, and sometimes bitterness the reality of life behind the
feudal ideal, often focusing on the lower classes.
A more refined culture began to emerge at the courts of the nobility in
the late 11th century, an era of relative peace and economic prosperity. In
1137 Eleanor of Aquitaine became queen and brought to the court in Paris
the rich and elegant culture of her home in southe rn France in the region of
Provence. One tradition her reign fostered was that of the troubadours, lyric
poets from Provence whose verses centered on love (see Courtly Love;
Troubadours and Trouvères).

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~ 6 ~ Eleanor’s daughters Aelis and Marie married French n oblemen and
brought provençal tastes to their own aristocratic courts. Marie’s court at
Troyes became a center for discussions about the tensions between
extramarital love and the institutions of marriage and the church. There
Andreas Capellanus wrote in L atin his De Amore (1185?; Art of Courtly Love),
and Chrétien de Troyes wrote his tales of Arthurian legend, Yvain, ou le
chevalier au lion (1170?; Gawain, or the Knight of the Lion), Lancelot, ou le
chevalier de la charrette (1170?; Lancelot, or the Knight of the Cart), and
Perceval, ou le conte du graal (1190?; Percival, or the Story of the Grail).
These works immortalized the names and stories of the knights Gawain,
Lancelot, and Percival.
Courtly literature also includes the Lais (1175?; Lays) of France ’s first
great female poet, Marie de France; the versions of Tristan et Iseut (late 12th
century) of Thomas d'Angleterre and Béroul; and the anonymous Auccassin
et Nicolette (1225?). Along with the tales of Chrétien de Troyes, these works
constitute courtl y literature. Although concepts of love and the relationship
between the lovers and social institutions differ from work to work, the
central idea that is either upheld or attacked in courtly literature is that love
cannot exist within marriage and that th e church is wrong to condemn
adulterous lovers. In the stories about Tristan and Iseut, for example, the
narrator approves of the lovers, despite the fact that the deceived husband
is a king and that the church disapproves of their love. The narrator sugge sts
that their love is destined and that God, if not the church, understands this.
Many of the heroes and heroines of the lays, or short narrative poems, of
Marie de France are also adulterous lovers. Chrétien de Troyes, however,
attacks adulterous courtly love in all but one of his works and advocates the
compatibility of love and marriage. Courtly love is therefore less an ideology
than a set of issues concerning the nature of love and its meaning to the
individual and to society.
Le Roman de la Rose (Th e Romance of the Rose), begun by Guillaume
de Lorris about 1235, is an allegorical poem in which a rose stands for the
beloved and a garden for courtly life. It portrays a world in which love
resembles the courtly love in literature of the time. The second part of the
work, completed by Jean de Meun between 1275 and 1280, is very different.
Although it continues the allegory of love, it contains long encyclopedic
digressions that cover almost the whole field of medieval thought.
The chansons de geste and t he courtly romances – despite their
different positions on feudal society – were addressed to the same aristocratic
audience. The middle class, however, developed a literature that reflected its
own tastes and preoccupations. This was a narrative, satirical, p icturesque,
realistic, and sometimes smutty literature. Its masterpiece is Le Roman de
Renart (The Romance of Reynard), a vast collection of fables featuring a wily
character named Reynard the Fox and his adventures in an animal world
that is organized in the image of French medieval society. Tales of Reynard
were written in French from the 12th century into the 14th century. In the
fables written in the 12th century, the literary parody and social satire are
largely in good fun. But beginning in the 13th c entury, in works such as

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~ 7 ~ Renart le bestourné (Renard the Hypocrite) by Rutebeuf and Renart le nouvel
(Renard the New) by Jacquemart Gelée, the authors strongly denounce
feudal customs, abuses of justice, and religious hypocrisy.
Another middle -class form was the fabliau, a short narrative in verse
that flourished in the 13th and 14th centuries. About 150 fabliaux survive.
They consist of the contes à rire (tales for laughing) and the contes moraux
ou edifiants (moral or edifying tales). The contes à rire a re bawdy, realistic,
and sometimes vulgar. The contes moraux, on the other hand, aim to teach
moral principles or to decry social vices and hypocrisies.

2.3. Lyric Poetry
Beginning in the 13th century, French literature began to break away
from old forms. This change can be seen in the transformation of lyric poetry,
which traditionally had been accompanied by music and had expressed the
thoughts and emotions of an individual who spoke as “I.” In most of the rich
body of medieval French lyric poetry, from the 12th to the 15th centuries,
this “I” took a conventional form. In the aristocratic poems of both the poets
of the north (trouvères) and the troubadours in the south, the “I” was a
standard character who represented either the perfect lover or the ideal
beloved.
In the 13th century, however, Jean Bodel, Colin Muset, and Rutebeuf
wrote a less conventional kind of poetry in which the poet’s personality
played an essential role and established a distinctive voice. The works of
these poets signaled an evolu tion in lyric poetry toward more personal
expression. The change culminated in the works of one of the greatest of all
French lyric poets, François Villon, whose Testament (1461) is a masterpiece
of French literature. This work reviews Villon’s own vagabon d life and relates
it to human life in general. Villon's radical individualism in making himself
so much the subject of his work announces the next period of cultural
history, the Renaissance.

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3. THE 16TH CENTURY

The Renaissance in France coincided wi th the 16th century. It was an
age marked by intense intellectual and artistic activity during which writers
explored new ideas and new literary forms. The Renaissance had begun in
Italy in the 14th century, when influential thinkers challenged longstandin g
beliefs in all areas of society. With the challenge to dogma came a new
awareness of beauty. The new way of thinking began to filter into France
after the outbreak of the Wars of Italy in 1494. French armies returning from
Italy brought a knowledge of th e Italian Renaissance, of the taste and
luxurious living of the Italian nobility, and of the new values of humanism.
The Renaissance châteaux built in the valley of the Loire River in France
testify to the impression Italian palaces made on the aristocrati c leaders of
the French army.

3.1. Humanism
The school of thought known as humanism promoted the revival of
Greek and Roman artistic and philosophical models that celebrated the
worth of the individual. The royal courts of King Francis I and his sister
Margaret of Navarre in particular fostered the humanist spirit. At these
courts artists, poets, and philologists (scholars of language) received support
for their work. In 1530 Francis founded an institution for the study of ancient
languages. The study of the humanities was the core curriculum, replac ing
the formal logic of scholasticism. The institute eventually evolved into the
distinguished Collège de France.
The arrival of the Renaissance in France did not, however, immediately
produce works born from the new ideas. The rhétoriqueurs, a group of p oets
devoted to the old ideas of rhetoric (rules of composition) and form,
dominated the first quarter of the century. Clément Marot, the son of one of
these writers, was the first great poet of the century. Many of his writings
belong to medieval genres, such as allegory, but he was also an innovator;
in a sense he was the last representative of the Middle Ages and the first of
the Renaissance. His primary accomplishment was the introduction into
France of the sonnet, a verse form developed by the Italians .
The first great French writer of Renaissance prose, François Rabelais,
brought together the humanist passion for knowledge and the Italian love of
beauty and pleasure. The gigantic hunger and thirst of his fictional giants
Pantagruel and Gargantua symbo lize the new era’s insatiable appetite for
learning and pleasures of the senses. In his works Pantagruel (1532),
Gargantua (1534), Le tiers livre (1546; The Third Book), and Le quart livre
(1552; The Fourth Book), Rabelais satirized stupidity, snobbism,

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~ 9 ~ superstition, and contemporary institutions, and he offered insights on
education, war, justice, and religion. At the same time he exalted the
cultivation and blossoming of all human faculties and potentials.
Two other writers of Rabelais's generation merit particular mention:
Margaret of Navarre and Maurice Scève. The sister of Francis I, Margaret was
the author of L'heptaméron (1559; The Heptameron). Inspired by Il
decamerone by the Italian Giovanni Boccaccio (1353; The Decameron), the
work is a collection of tales supposedly recounted by travelers detained by
bad weather in the Pyrenees Mountains. Scève was the chief representative
of L'Ecole lyonnaise (The School of Lyons), which included two important
female poets, Louise Labé and Pernette du Guillet. Th e latter inspired Scève's
masterpiece, a collection of poems entitled Délie (1544). The Lyons poets
wrote of spiritual love and yearning, and their poems indicate a new
acceptance of human emotion in written works.

3.2. Other Trends
In 1549 poet Joachim d u Bellay issued a manifesto entitled La défence
et illustration de la langue française (The Defense and Illustration of the
French Language). This was the manifesto of a group of poets known as La
Pléïade. The group took its name from the seven daughters o f the Greek god
Atlas and from seven poets in Alexandria in the 3rd century bc who had
adopted the name for their poetic school. The French writers who claimed
the hallowed title were du Bellay and Pierre de Ronsard, along with five lesser
poets (Etienne J odelle, Rémy Belleau, Jacques Peletier du Mans, Antoine de
Baïf, and Pontus de Tyard). Du Bellay’s Défence announced the group’s goal
of elevating the French language and its literature to a level at least as
illustrious as that achieved by the Greeks, Rom ans, and Italians. For about
30 years, from 1549 to 1580, La Pléïade dominated French letters, especially
through the odes and sonnets of Ronsard.
Civil war between Roman Catholics and Protestants tore France apart
from 1562 to 1598. The so -called Wars of Religion pitted family against
family, lord against lord, and, most significantly, Catholic lords against their
Protestant king. The most violent single incident came in 1572, when
Catholics murdered about 2000 Protestants in Paris in the Massacre of Sain t
Bartholomew’s Day. Although the royal family was Protestant, the majority
of the French people were Catholic, and the violence did not end until King
Henry IV converted to Catholicism in 1593 and issued the Edict of Nantes in
1598, granting freedom of wo rship to French Protestants. The great poet of
the Wars of Religion was Agrippa d'Aubigné, whose epic Les tragiques (1616;
The Tragic Ones) captured the suffering of the time and denounced the
cruelty of war. The writings of Jean de Sponde and Jean -Baptist e Chassignet
also reflect the turmoil of the time, often by focusing on pain and death.
One French writer who rose above the troubles of the period was Michel
Eyquem de Montaigne. Although he was active as a diplomat in his early
years and as mayor of Bor deaux for a time, Montaigne spent most of his life
in his book -lined tower, where he read, reflected, and wrote his Essais (1580,
with revised editions published in 1588 and 1595; Essays). The word essai

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~ 10 ~ means a testing or an effort; in Montaigne’s work it refers to his efforts to
search for, study, and explain himself and, by extension, the human
condition. In writing the Essais, Montaigne created the modern personal
essay and left an indelible example of Renaissance individualism.

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4. THE 17TH CENTURY

For France, the 17th century was le grand siècle (the great century),
l’âge classique (the classical age), and the century of le roi soleil (the sun
king) Louis XIV. King Louis XIV, who ruled from 1643 to 1715, brought to
fulfillment the idea of absolute m onarchy, with all power centralized under
the king. He resolved the continuing strife among nobles and between the
nobility and the king by bringing them all to his court at Versailles, where
he could keep an eye on them. The stability brought by centraliz ed power
came at a price, however. The great families continued to feud, and Louis
XIV made it clear that he would deal ruthlessly with those who did not
submit to his authority when he put to death several great lords.
French culture flourished under Lo uis XIV, and French culture,
manners, and thought spread throughout Europe. The individualism and
lyricism that had characterized French Renaissance literature gave way in
the 17th century to classicism and an emphasis on classical ideas of order,
restrain t, clarity, and reason. To this end, French scholars formulated rules
governing literary style. The chief literary forms of the time were drama,
satire, and the novel. Two important and related questions dominated French
literary discussions: What is the t ruth of the human heart? and what ideal
should society have for its members? Both led to the great preoccupation of
the century: the relationship between human passions and human reason.

4.1. Baroque Period
The arts and culture that developed in the firs t half of the 17th century
differed greatly from the classicism that followed. The period before
classicism is often referred to as the baroque period. Whereas clarity,
rationality, order, unity, and symmetry characterized classicism, it was
illusion, myst ery, emotionality, multiplicity, dynamism, and depth that were
the hallmarks of the baroque style.
In 1600 France had just emerged from the Wars of Religion, and its
cultural and social life not surprisingly lacked refinement. This situation
gradually cha nged, as salons held in private homes became intellectual
centers where the aristocracy discussed literature and philosophy. The
aristocracy spoke in an increasingly witty and cultivated manner that was
termed préciosité (preciosity or preciousness). It be came the style that most
fully represented the baroque period. The liveliest Paris salon was the Hôtel
de Rambouillet, hosted by Catherine de Vivonne, Marquise de Rambouillet.
Although the dramatist Molière mocked preciosity in his play Les précieuses
ridicules (1659; The Conceited Ladies), the style reflected the desire of
French society for a richer and more refined cultural life.

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~ 12 ~ The important writers of this period included François de Malherbe,
who helped create the literary language of French classicism; the clergyman
Jacques -Bénigne Bossuet, known for his sermons; and Marie de Rabutin –
Chantal, Marquise de Sévigné. Sévigné is be st known for her letters to her
daughter, which provide a remarkably detailed picture of French society.
Among the works discussed at Parisian salons were L'Astrée (1607 -1627;
The Story of Astrée) by Honoré d’Urfé and Clélie (1654 -1660), a lengthy and
sentimental romance by Madeleine de Scudéry. Clélie contains the Carte de
Tendre (Map of Tenderness), an allegorical map purporting to show the way
to a woman’s affections.

4.2. Classical Period
Cultural life in France had become centralized under King Louis XIII,
the father of Louis XIV, and his prime minister, Cardinal Richelieu. Among
the aspects of cultural life that Richelieu wished to control were the French
language and French literature. In 1634 he asked a group of writers who had
been meeting informal ly to form the French Academy. A charter for the new
organization was issued the following year.
The Academy worked on compiling a French dictionary and planned
a grammar, a rhetoric, and a poetic that would lay down the rules for
literary composition. Bu t it gained more attention for the rules it
formulated regarding theater, the most important literary genre of the
century, which precipitated a major literary debate. The rules centered on
the notion of catharsis (emotional purging) as the function of tra gedy, an
idea put forth by Greek philosopher Aristotle. Catharsis meant that
spectators were purged of their passions through the pity and fear inspired
by the tragedy. For this to happen, the audience had to believe absolutely
in what they saw, an achieve ment made possible, according to the
Academy, by invoking Aristotle’s three dramatic unities. What was
represented must be simple (the unity of action), must take place in one
location (the unity of place), and must take place in a brief period of time
(the unity of time). These rules were rational, the Academy believed, and
led to a rationally desirable end: the purgation of passion. The ideal human
being, by analogy, was someone capable of controlling passion through the
use of reason.
In 1638 the Academ y published Sentiments de l'Académie sur le Cid
(Judgments of the Academy on the Cid), a critique of a play by Pierre
Corneille. Members of the Academy criticized points of grammar and style,
as well as breaches of the rules for drama derived from Aristotl e. The Parisian
public loved the play as it was and quarreled with the critics. The ensuing
controversy was termed the Querelle du Cid (The Quarrel of the Cid).
Corneille was so offended by the Academy’s criticism that he ceased to write
for theater for fo ur years. In 1640, however, he produced two plays (Horace
and Cinna) that faithfully observed the rules invoked by the Academy. Just
as Richelieu had prevailed in his vision of political order imposed by absolute
monarchy, the Academy’s new classicism triu mphed when Corneille
adjusted his writing style to conform to the Academy’s rules.

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~ 13 ~ The philosopher René Descartes was developing his ideas at this time,
and they followed much the same form as classicism. Descartes proposed a
philosophy based on reason a nd advocated the use of scientific principles to
discover truth. In his Traité des passions (1649; Treatise on Passion)
Descartes describes the struggle involved in using reason to control the
passions, an experience dramatized by Corneille in Le Cid and m ost of his
subsequent plays. Descartes and Corneille were optimistic about the
outcome of the struggle and believed that human beings could influence
their own destinies. Two other writers were not so optimistic about the ability
to control human fate. Bla ise Pascal reflected the pessimism of the
Jansenists, his teachers at the religious monastery of Port Royal, in his
Lettres provinciales (1656 -1657; The Provincial Letters) and Les pensées
(1670; The Thoughts of Pascal) (see Jansenism). The Jansenists beli eved that
humans need grace from God to save them from the sinful nature of their
passions. The playwright Jean Baptiste Racine was also a student of the
Jansenists. The influence of the Port Royal school shows clearly in his
masterpieces Andromaque (1667; Andromache), Iphigénie (1674; Iphigénia),
and Phèdre (1677; Phaedra), which are weighted with the concept that
humans cannot escape their fate through their own actions.
The third great playwright of this period (along with Corneille and
Racine) was the master of comedy, Molière. He too was interested in the
workings of the human heart, the ideal member of society, and the
relationship between reason and the passions. Molière’s characters are
motivated by hypocrisy, immoderation, vanity, tyranny, and gre ed, although
in his plays, the qualities that win out in the end are authenticity,
moderation, and respect for what follows nature’s plan or advances human
freedom. In Molière’s masterpiece Le misanthrope (1666; The Misanthrope),
the central character, Alc este, who believes in absolute truth and total
sincerity, loves Célimène, a liar and cheat. Other characters in the play
represent points along a continuum between these two extremes, and the
work explores the degree of moderation people should strive to a chieve.
The drift toward pessimism evident in the works of Pascal and Racine
was echoed in two other works from the 1670s. In his Maximes (1665 -1678),
François de La Rochefoucauld asserts in brief, often single -sentence
observations that self -love motivat es most human behavior, even in those
instances when virtue seems to be present. 'The love of justice,' suggests La
Rochefoucauld, 'in most men is merely the fear of suffering injustice.'
Another pessimist, Marie de La Fayette, wrote what most scholars con sider
the first modern psychological novel, La princesse de Clèves (1678; The
Princess of Cleves). The book’s realism in its character portrayal sets it apart
from other novels of its time. It describes the long struggle of Madame de
Clèves against her inc lination for Monsieur de Nemours, a struggle
conducted in the apparently justifiable belief that love does not last, and so
is not worth having in the first place.
This growing pessimism about human nature and human destiny is
related to a current of skep ticism that arose in the 17th century among
libertins (free -thinkers, or libertines). A representative of this skepticism was

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~ 14 ~ Théophile de Viau, who was banished from Paris twice for atheism and
dissipated living. Poems attributed to him in Le Parnasse sat yrique (1622;
The Satirical Parnassus) disregard moral and sexual codes, and many of his
poems, like those of his fellow libertine Marc -Antoine de Gérard Saint –
Amant, went against religious doctrine and society’s moral conventions. The
libertines prepared the way for the critical and questioning spirit of Voltaire
and the encyclopédistes of the next century by transmitting the critical spirit
and reliance on logical reasoning of the Renaissance.
It was perhaps the elegant skepticism of Louis de Rouvroy, Du c de
Saint -Simon, who spent his life at the court of Versailles, that best bore
witness to the pessimism of the late 1600s. His Mémoires (published 1829;
Memoirs) presents a vivid image of the hypocrisy, cruelty, and corruption
that were the sordid reality beneath the lovely illusions of the last years of le
grand siècle.
Toward the end of the 17th century, the Querelle des anciens et des
modernes (The Quarrel of the Ancients and Moderns) divided writers into two
camps according to whom they thought superi or: Greek and Roman authors
or contemporary writers. The “moderns,” such as Charles Perrault and
Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle, held that writers of their own time
represented the maturity of human intellect. They believed that human
thought and culture had progressed and that contemporary intellectuals had
surpassed the Greeks and Romans. The ancients held that Greek and Roman
culture remained superior and provided a goal toward which contemporary
writers and artists ought to strive.

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~ 15 ~

5. THE 18TH CENTUR Y (AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT)

The 18th century in Europe saw the flowering of the Age of
Enlightenment. This period of intellectual curiosity and experimentation was
based on an abiding faith in the power of human reason to unlock the
mysteries of nature and society. One manifestation was a confident belief in
the steady advance of civilization through scientific progress. The desire for
improvement of the general human condition through tolerance, freedom,
and equality was expressed by French writers and thin kers who came to be
known as les philosophes (the philosophers). They devoted their attention
more to useful thought than to abstract thought and speculation. The most
ambitious project of the century was also the most representative of this new
way of thi nking. This was the publication of the 35 -volume Encyclopédie
(1751 -1772, with supplements in 1776 and 1777, and an index in 1780; The
Encyclopedia), a project headed by Denis Diderot and Jean d'Alembert.
Specifically designed to be practical and useful, t he Encyclopédie brought
together advanced opinions of the time on philosophy, politics, religion, and
other subjects. It also examined less exalted topics in articles on things such
as fairs and watch -making as well as on the practical matters of political
economy and civil law.
One result of the newfound intellectual energy in France was a
questioning of authority of all sorts, including the absolute monarchy. In the
last years of the reign of Louis XIV, who died in 1715, up until Louis XV took
the throne in 1723, France went through a period of crisis. This period was
marked by conflict between the French king and the pope; the prohibition of
the Jansenist sect at Port Royal; the revocation of the Edict of Nantes,
resulting in renewed persecution of Prote stants; and the increased suffering
of the lower classes. The political turmoil and consequent weakening of royal
power made possible stronger expressions of dissent and of doubts about
the established culture and government. The culmination of this dissen t was
the French Revolution at the close of the 18th century.
Changes in French society were reflected in changing literary
preferences. Just as society was influenced by an ever -growing and
increasingly prosperous middle class (the bourgeoisie), so the traditional
hierarchy of literary genres was altered by newly el evated forms. The lowly
prose novel and short story, favored by this emerging bourgeoisie, became
significant genres. The most important philosophes —Charles de
Montesquieu, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Voltaire, and Diderot —all wrote
fiction as well as nonfictio n essays on a variety of topics. They shared an
unshakable belief in the use of reason and scientific method to draw
conclusions from observations, a process that leads the observer from

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~ 16 ~ particular facts to general laws. These thinkers also believed in the
popularization of ideas among the people in order to promote progress and
improve society and individual lives. In support of these beliefs, the
philosophes were hostile to thought based on authority (medieval
scholasticism and excessive reverence for the ancients), prejudice,
fanaticism, superstition, and the assumption that one principle can explain
all.
Montesquieu is perhaps best known for De l'esprit des lois (1748; The
Spirit of Laws), the first great work of political sociology. In this work he
examines the three main types of government (republic, monarchy, and
despotism) and states that a relationship exists between an area’s climate,
geography, and general circumstances and the form of government that
evolves there. His literary masterpiece is Le s lettres persanes (1721; The
Persian Letters), fictional letters exchanged between two Persians visiting
Paris and their correspondents in Persia. Montesquieu used this device to
satirize contemporary French society and its institutions, including the kin g
himself. The themes of visitors from other lands, European visitors in foreign
lands, and even visitors from outer space were popular throughout the 18th
century and expressed the interest of the time in differences between
cultures.
Voltaire experience d cultural differences firsthand as a young man
when he was exiled to England for three years after a quarrel with an
illustrious French family. He was impressed with the English constitutional
monarchy and with English liberalism and tolerance. In his Let tres
philosophiques (1734; The Philosophical Letters), Voltaire admired English
customs and institutions while attacking their French counterparts. Voltaire
is also known for his attacks on religion and is usually called a deist
(someone who believes that God created the world and its natural laws but
takes no part in its further functioning). This belief is reflected in his
masterpiece, the philosophical tale Candide (1759), which depicts the woes
heaped upon the world in the name of religion.
Voltaire c reated a new genre in writing his philosophical tales, and his
contemporary Denis Diderot also experimented with literary forms. The most
subtle thinker of the philosophes, Diderot wrote an epistolary novel (a novel
written in the form of a series of lette rs) called La religieuse (written 1760,
published 1796; The Nun). This work vividly represents and criticizes life in
a convent. Diderot’s Neveu de rameau (written 1761 -1774, published 1805;
Rameau's Nephew) follows the uncommon form of a dialogue. The two
speakers, moi (me) and lui (him), represent Diderot and the nephew of
French composer Jean Philippe Rameau. The book captures the
discontinuity, unpredictability, and fragmentation of life and thought.
Jacques le fataliste (1796; Jacques the Fatalist) is a novel in the form of a
series of dialogues between an author -narrator and the reader, and, within
the story, between Jacques and his master. The book illustrates the
problems of freedom, fatalism, and the relationship between the two. In his
works Didero t alternates between the fear that emotions might take over
human action entirely and the certainty that pure reason by itself is blind

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~ 17 ~ and arid. The nature and relationship of the human head and heart
preoccupied many thinkers of the time.
Jean-Jacques R ousseau was also concerned with human sentiment
and human intellect, but he generally opposed the critical and atheistic
outlook of the philosophes and their belief in material progress. Rousseau
believed in God, thought that human nature was inherently go od but that
society corrupted it, and preached a return to nature and to the simple rustic
life. His treatise Le contrat social (1762; The Social Contract) helped provide
a philosophical basis for the French Revolution. In this work he asserted the
rights of equality and of individual liberty for all people and proposed a
democratic means of government in which power would rest with the
governed.
Like the philosophes, Rousseau also wrote novels. His La nouvelle
Héloïse (1761; The New Heloise), a lengthy e pistolary novel, dramatizes the
struggle of the characters Saint -Preux and Julie, who live under the same
roof as Julie’s husband, to transform their passionate love into a platonic
friendship. The novel was enormously successful, especially among the
French upper classes, who were moved by the frustrated passions and
tearful sensibilities of the characters. In his autobiographical Confessions
(1781, 1788; The Confessions), Rousseau describes his battle with his own
emotions and his lifelong struggle to pro tect, nurture, and express his
individual genius. Rousseau’s writings had an enormous influence on the
romantic movement in the early 19th century.
Works by Alain -René Lesage, Pierre Marivaux, and Abbé Prévost
revealed other possibilities for the novel. L esage’s Gil Blas (1715 -1735),
which recounts the adventures of a Spanish rogue, was an early and
influential realistic novel. Other realistic fiction of the 18th century includes
Marivaux’s La vie de Marianne (1731 -1741; The Life of Marianne) and
Prévost's Manon Lescaut (1731). The 19th -century novel owed much to these
18th-century precedents.
Toward the end of the century, Pierre Choderlos de Laclos’s epistolary
novel Les liaisons dangereuses (1782; Dangerous Liaisons) appeared. It is a
witty, scandalous story of intrigue that depicts a corrupt aristocracy ripe for
a fall. Pierre Beaumarchais presented much the same idea in his play Le
mariage de Figaro (1784; The Marriage of Figaro), which features a servant
more intelligent than his master, symbolizing t he decline of the old regime.
The greatest lyric poet of the 18th century was André Chénier, whose fate
dramatized the difficult position of writers during the French Revolution.
Chénier sung the praises of the early Revolution, but after he criticized its
later violence, he was put to death by guillotine.

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~ 18 ~

6. THE 19TH CENTURY

The history of 19th -century France is that of a country struggling to
deal with the aftermath of the Revolution. Two republics, several revolutions
and coups d'état, the empires of Napoleon I and Napoleon III, and the
restoration of the monarchy followed one another in a topsy -turvy succession
of regimes, ideologies, and political philosophies. Similarly, the literary
history of the 19th century is of a series of efforts to replace the classicism
of the 17th and 18th centuries and its emphasis on order, reason, and
clarity. Romanticism, realism, naturalism, Parnassianism, and symbolism
were the concepts, movements, and schools that dominated the 19th
century. The novel continued to p rosper in the 19th century and provided
some of the masterpieces of French literature. It was the preeminent
democratic genre, documenting detail and fact rather than the universal and
general principles that the 18th -century philosophes pursued. Liberated
from the hierarchy of the old regime, the 19th -century novel could express
the distinctiveness of the individual. Writers increasingly portrayed
protagonists from different levels of society, even the very lowest.

6.1. Romanticism
Romanticism, the first of the 19th -century literary movements, echoed
the demand for freedom in the political sphere. Romanticism emphasized the
role of the imagination and a subjective approach in creativity, along with
freedom of thought and expression. In their prefaces, mani festos, and
articles, the romantics called for the abolition of the rules created in the 17th
century by the French Academy. They opposed any limitations placed upon
the individual artist by cultural or political powers.
French romanticism began with De la littérature (1800; On Literature)
by Madame de Staël. This volume of criticism acquainted French readers with
the development of romanticism in other European countries, especially
England and Germany. Madame de Staël defined romanticism as the rejectio n
of classicism, and suggested that lyricism – the poetic and emotional
expression of enthusiasm – was romanticism’s chief characteristic.
François -René de Chateaubriand was, according to some, the first true
French writer of romanticism. His novellas (short novels) Atala (1801) and
René (1802) describe the wanderings of a restless young nobleman. René’s
vague melancholy, longing, and discontent typified a general attitude in
France in the years after the Revolution, when the younger generation found
itself wi thout purpose or direction. In René, the main character finds his own
moods, passions, and restlessness reflected in nature. The use of nature as
a mirror of human emotions became a hallmark of romanticism.

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~ 19 ~ A group known as the romantic school got its st art in 1823 in the
literary salon of Charles Nodier, which was frequented by the four great
romantic poets of France – Victor Hugo, Alfred de Vigny, Alfred de Musset,
and Alphonse de Lamartine. All these writers expressed intensely personal
feelings and a co ncern with humankind’s relation to nature and the universe.
In the poem “Le Lac” (1820), for example, Lamartine pleads with Lake
Bourget to retain the memory and feelings of his earlier love affair there. This
projection of human feeling onto inanimate nat ure is known as the romantic
pathetic fallacy.
The theater, however, marked the major battlefront in the struggle to
establish romanticism. Victor Hugo was a leader of the authors who rejected
many of the rules that had governed French drama in the classical age. The
preface to Hugo’s play Cromwell (18 27) explained and defended the new
spirit in art, pleading for “the freedom of art against the despotism of systems
of rules and codes.” The premiere of Hugo's play Hernani (1830) is often
called la bataille d'Hernani (the battle of Hernani) because the ri valry
between the play’s supporters and its critics among the classicists verged on
violence. Other major romantic dramas are Racine et Shakespeare (1823,
1825; Racine and Shakespeare) by Stendhal; Henri III et sa cour (1829;
Henry III and His Court) by Al exandre Dumas père; and an adaptation of
Othello (1829) by de Vigny.
The historical novel dealing with French history was especially popular
during the romantic era. The term couleur locale (local color) referred to the
use of distinctive detail in plots , characters, and especially to descriptions of
customs, people, places, and objects intended to ensure historical accuracy.
Outstanding historical novels included Hugo's Notre Dame de Paris (1831;
The Hunchback of Notre Dame), which sought to recreate the French Middle
Ages, and Les misérables (1862), which deals with French society of his own
time. Dumas père's Les trois mousquetaires (1844; The Three Musketeers)
and de Vigny's Cinq -Mars (1826) are both situated in the early 17th century.

6.2. Realism
The concern for accurate, detailed description became the outstanding
feature of realism, the movement that followed romanticism in French
literature. The pursuit of scientific accuracy, which began among romantic
writers, reflected a desire to keep pace wi th the scientific methods and
discoveries of the period. This pursuit can be seen by the 1830s in Stendhal’s
Le rouge et le noir (1831; The Red and the Black), as well as in Eugénie
Grandet (1833) and Le Père Goriot (1834; Father Goriot) by Honoré de
Balza c. Balzac claimed a sociological value for his work in the preface to his
masterpiece, La comédie humaine (published 1842 -1848; The Human
Comedy). La comédie humaine is a collection of about 90 novels and stories
that present a varied and faithful picture of French society in the first half of
the 19th century. Balzac was the first major novelist to document in minute
detail the lives and environments of fictional characters.
By the mid -19th century, realism dominated French literature. The
essay collectio n Le réalisme (1857; Realism) by Champfleury was the

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~ 20 ~ manifesto of the new trend, but Gustave Flaubert was considered the father
of realism by a large group of followers. His meticulous approach to fiction
is best exemplified by Madame Bovary (1857), which examines the tragic life
of a woman whose drab everyday existence brutally conflicts with her
romantic dreams. Flaubert’s stated goal was to hide all traces of the author,
much as he considered God to be absent from nature. The reader encounters
characters of remarkable mediocrity and stupidity, but no narrator judges
them or tells the reader how they should be judged. Flaubert’s reliance on
an objective and articulate narrator to report a character’s exact thoughts
revolutionized modern fiction. Flaubert h imself used this technique to depict
and critique the inability of the romantic temperament to live in the real
world.

6.3. Naturalism
The same year that Madame Bovary appeared, Hippolyte Taine
published Les philosophes classiques du XIXe siècle en France (Classic
French Philosophers of the 19th Century). In this work, he set forth a plan
for the application of scientific methods to the study of human nature and
history. Taine asserted the importance of such formative influences as 'la
race, le milieu, et le moment' ('race [heredity], environment, and historical
moment') for human character and society. Among his admirers were the
brothers Edmond and Jules de Goncourt, who formed a bridge between
realism and an extreme form of realism, called naturalism, th at followed it.
Naturalist writers also aimed at an objective depiction of life. They believed
human behavior was determined by hereditary instincts and emotions and
by the social and economic environment, rather than by free human choice.
The Goncourt bro thers said that the novel should represent 'history as it
might have happened' and stated that fiction should be documented as
carefully as history, and that it should have the same truth value. Their novel
Germinie Lacerteux (1864) was a precursor of natu ralism.
Émile Zola emerged as the leader of the naturalist school. His Les
Rougon -Macquart (1871 -1893; The Rougon -Macquarts), a cycle of 20 novels,
contains the masterpieces of naturalism L'assomoir (1877; The Dram Shop)
and Germinal (1885). In his books, Zola applies the scientific method to his
investigations of alcoholism, prostitution, incest, and the miseries of poverty.
To write his books and create his characters, Zola visited the locations where
the stories took place, observed closely, and took co pious notes. Other major
naturalist novelists were Guy de Maupassant, Alphonse Daudet, Joris Karl
Huysmans, and Henry Céard. Les corbeaux (1882; The Crows) by Henri
Becque is considered the best of the naturalist plays.

6.4. Parnassians
The disenchantment with romanticism that resulted in the realist and
naturalist novels also produced the Parnassian school of poetry. The
Parnassian school’s name is taken from Parnassus, the legendary Greek
mountain where Apollo and the Muses dwelled. Théophile Gautier and
Leconte de Lisle were major influences on the movement. Gautier's theory of

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~ 21 ~ art for art’s sake and de Lisle's notion of pure art anticipate the Parnassians’
revolt against the emotionalism of romanticism in favor of technical
perfection and an impersonal attitude. The Parnassian poets announced
their presence in 1866 with the publication of the journal Le Parnasse
contemporain (The Contemporary Parnassus). Their poems are characterized
by impeccable form, technical brilliance, and pictorial and sculptural images
that often evoke a Greco -Roman historical or archaeological past. The
Parnassians include Théodore de Banville, François Coppée, and José María
Heredia.

6.5. Symbolist Movement
The Parnassians were succeeded by the symbolists. The symbolist
movemen t began with Romances sans paroles (1874; Romances Without
Words) by Paul Verlaine and L'après -midi d'un faune (1876; The Afternoon
of a Faun) by Stéphane Mallarmé. The symbolists wanted to evoke rather
than describe. To do so, they used fluid and musical versification,
impressions, intuitions, and sensations. A symbol was not meant to
symbolize a specific idea, thing, person, or place, but rather to provoke and
evoke different associations in different readers. Perhaps the greatest
symbolist poet was Arthu r Rimbaud, who wrote most of his poems before he
was 19 years old. “Le bateau ivre” (1871, The Drunken Boat), written when
he was 16, suggests the chaotic state of the human spirit in terms of a storm –
tossed boat abandoned on the high seas. Rimbaud’s use o f bizarre imagery
and his bold experimentation with language profoundly influenced many
later French poets, especially the surrealists of the 1920s and 1930s. Other
symbolist writers were Jules Laforgue, Henri de Régnier, Jean Moréas,
Tristan Corbière, and Jean Marie Mathias Philippe Auguste Villiers de l'Isle –
Adam. The Belgian poets Emile Verhaeren and Maurice Maeterlinck were
also important symbolists, as were two American expatriates living in
France, Francis Viélé -Griffin and Stuart Merrill.
Although C harles Baudelaire is considered a leader of the symbolist
movement, his volume of poetry Les fleurs du mal (1857; The Flowers of Evil)
defies classification. The mystery of the natural world, the yearning for a
beyond, the theme of ennui (anguish due to me aninglessness), and the great
passion in this work all recall the romantics. Baudelaire's impeccable form,
classical versification, and brilliant pictorial imagery are worthy of the
Parnassians. He deeply influenced the symbolists through his concept and
use of les correspondances (the correspondences) between the colors, scents,
and sounds of this world, and their correspondences with another world. He
was also noted for his emphasis on the musicality of poetry.
Despite the many innovations of the late 19 th century, a segment of
the population looked back to earlier eras. In his novel Les déracinés (1897;
The Uprooted), Maurice Barrès proposed that the solution to the
meaninglessness felt by many French youths was a return to their native
regions, where th ey could immerse themselves in the regional customs,
traditions, and history. In À rebours (1884; Against the Grain) by Joris Karl
Huysmans, the hero, Des Esseintes, is a survivor of an exhausted noble line.

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~ 22 ~ He fights his debilitating boredom by leading a life systematically opposed to
that of the modern democratic herd. As these two examples make clear,
France at the end of the 19th century was still haunted by the Old Regime.

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~ 23 ~

7. THE 20TH CENTURY

Whereas 19th -century French literature chronicled the country’s
struggle to come to terms with the French Revolution, 20th -century French
literature had to contend with the impact of two cataclysms: World War I
(1914 -1918) and World War II (1939 -1945). The devastation of these wars and
the unspeakable horrors that accompanied them have tested humanity’s
belief in the existence of a God and the belief in the goodness of human nature.
Confronted with these calamitous wars, the Cold War that followed them, and
wars of independence fought in French colonies, French intellectuals were
forced to acknowledge that previously held beliefs had failed to create a more
humane world. Among the beliefs that came into question were the faith in
human nature inherited from the Renaissance, the faith in material progress
bequeathed by the Enlightenment, and, especially, the worship of technology
passed on by the Industrial Revolution. French writers living in a new world
of nuclear energy, computerization, and increased media influence sought to
redefine their role in society and their concepts of literature.

7.1. Belle Epoque
Before the pessimism of the 1920s set in, a brief period of optimism
reigned in France. The early years of the 20th century, before World War I,
are ca lled the belle epoque (beautiful epoch) in France because they
constituted an exhilarating period of economic prosperity and progress. Such
inventions as the telephone, the automobile, the airplane, and the cinema
had speeded up and enlivened modern life. The poems of Guillaume
Apollinaire reflect the giddy times. He expressed society’s distaste for
outmoded styles, such as naturalism, and its enthusiasm for the new and
exciting – the Eiffel Tower, cubism, and the joyful life of cabarets and music
halls. Apol linaire himself made bold experiments in form and style,
eliminating punctuation and juxtaposing seemingly unrelated images.
Some writers did maintain continuity with 19th -century forms,
especially playwrights Edmond Rostand and Jules Renard, but many oth ers
followed Apollinaire’s lead and created new forms. The extravagant farce of
Ubu roi (1896; Ubu King, 1951) by Alfred Jarry and the highly poetic and
densely packed dramas of Paul Claudel challenged conventions in drama.
The novel Le grand meaulnes (191 3; The Wanderer, 1928) by Alain -Fournier
is a poetic and mysterious denial of the limitations the realists and
naturalists placed on the human imagination. Similarly, philosopher Henri
Bergson rejected the naturalist view that human destiny is shaped by
predetermined factors and suggested that people have free will and limitless
creative energy.

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~ 24 ~ 7.2. Dada and Surrealism
After the outbreak of World War I, many French writers and artists fled
to neutral Switzerland. In Zürich, they formed the dada movement, led by
Tristan Tzara. In 1920, after the most destructive war yet seen, the dadaists
made Paris their center. Although dada is a child’s word for hobbyhorse,
Tzara had selected it at random from a dictionary as a name for the new
movement. To the dadaists, the meaninglessness of the name represented
the assault they launched on reason. Their slogan, 'Plus rien, rien, RIEN,
RIEN, RIEN' (Nothing more, nothing, nothing, NOTHING, NOTHING,
NOTHING), reflected their nihilism, or lack of belief in anything. This
viewpoint was born from the senseless slaughter of the war.
Dada led to surrealism, a movement that dates from the mid -1920s.
Surrealism was headed in the beginning by André Breton, and included such
poets as Paul Éluard and Louis Aragon. The surrealists b elieved that another
reality lies beyond this one, and they sought to express this irrational sur –
reality in their writing through such means as automatic writing, in which
they wrote down whatever words came into their minds. Deeply influenced
by the idea s of Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, they
attempted to tap the subconscious mind through the images of dreams and
the free flow of conscious thought. They differed greatly from the “engaged”
writers of the time who used their writing to displ ay their commitment to
causes. These authors included Maurice Barrès, who publicized his views on
many political issues; Charles Péguy, who was dedicated to the cause of
social justice; André Gide, who became interested in Communism; and
Colette, who expre ssed feminist views in such novels as La vagabonde (1910;
The Vagabond, 1912) and Chéri (1920; translated 1929). By 1938 the
surrealist movement had split. One faction was led by André Breton, who
had become a Communist, and the other was led by Philippe S oupault, who
believed in no cause but art.

7.3. Between the World Wars
Between the two World Wars, the novel remained the dominant literary
genre. Colette, Jean Cocteau, Raymond Radiguet, François Mauriac, and
others wrote novels reminiscent of the tradit ional psychological novel of
Marie de La Fayette. However, considerable experimentation occurred as
well, prompted in part by the growing presence of cinema. The four great
novels of the period were radical experiments. André Gide's Les faux –
monnayeurs (19 26; The Counterfeiters, 1928) contests the very possibility of
using an omniscient narrator or of writing a traditional novel in complex
modern times. Gide’s book had significant influence on the nouveau roman
(new novel) that developed in the 1950s. The s econd novel, Voyage au bout
de la nuit (1932; Journey to the End of the Night, 1934) by Louis -Ferdinand
Céline, is based on Céline's own experiences as a soldier in World War I, as
a doctor in the slums of Paris, and as a traveler to the United States and
Africa. The narrative voice uses violent but everyday language to condemn
the injustices and suffering of the common people of the world. La condition
humaine (1933; Man's Fate, 1934) by André Malraux is the third of the great

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~ 25 ~ French novels from between th e wars. It takes place during an uprising in
China in the late 1920s and creates a new type of hero, the revolutionary
adventurer engaged in the plight of the oppressed. Fascinated by film,
Malraux adapted his novel L'espoir (1937; Man’s Hope, 1938), based on his
own experiences of the Spanish Civil War, to the screen. Both books by
Malraux deal with individuals struggling to triumph over destiny.
The greatest of all the novels, and perhaps of French literature itself, is
À la recherche du temps perdu (191 3-1927; Remembrance of Things Past,
1922 -1931) by Marcel Proust. In the seven parts of this masterpiece, Proust
explored the depths of the human psyche, subconscious motivations, and
the irrationality of human behavior, particularly in relation to love. Th e
work’s historical and sociological interest stems from its vivid portrayal of
France before and after World War I, documenting the twilight of traditional
French society. The work’s artistic interest lies in Proust's claim to conquer
time and mortality t hrough memories that surface involuntarily and through
art. Time is perceived in terms similar to the theories of Henri Bergson: in
constant flux, with moments of the past and the present having equal reality.
Theater between the World Wars was characteri zed by a return to the
themes of ancient myth, as playwrights sought universal and timeless values
and truths to counteract the nihilism of their own times. The most successful
examples of this mythic revival were the version of the Oedipus story that
Jean Cocteau presented in La machine infernale (1934; The Infernal
Machine, 1936), and La guerre de Troie n'aura pas lieu (1935; Tiger at the
Gates, 1955) by Jean Giraudoux. This trend continued after World War II,
with a group of playwrights Jean -Paul Sartre called “the forgers of myth.”
These writers included Jean Anouilh, Albert Camus, and Sartre himself.

7.4. Existentialism
Much literature after World War II was in reaction to the German
occupation of France during the war. The works of authors who coopera ted
with the Germans or sympathized with fascist beliefs —including Céline,
Drieu La Rochelle, and Robert Brasillach —were ignored after the conflict.
But many writers who took part in the resistance movement were considered
heroes after the liberation of Fr ance. They included Sartre, Malraux, Simone
de Beauvoir, René Char, and especially Camus. For these writers, the
experience of the occupation reinforced a belief in the absurdity of human
existence. At the same time, resistance and collaboration, and the t rials of
collaborators held after the liberation, emphasized the idea of personal
responsibility for one’s acts. This difficult position in which people found
themselves during and after the war – responsible for their actions in a world
beyond their compreh ension – was explored in the philosophy of
existentialism. Among works of existentialist fiction written during the war
were Camus’s novel L'étranger (1942; The Stranger, 1946), Sartre’s play Les
mouches (1943; The Flies, 1946), and Beauvoir’s novel L'invité e (1943; She
Came to Stay, 1949). Camus, Sartre, and Beauvoir continued to dominate
the novel and theater after the war.

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~ 26 ~ 7.5. Other Postwar Developments
Many poets of the postwar period came out of the surrealist movement
or were deeply influenced by it. They included Éluard, Char, Henri Michaux,
Raymond Queneau, and Francis Ponge. Each of these poets is distinctive,
and they share only the concept of poet ry as a means to explore the mysteries
of the world and the self. In the mid – and late 20th century, modern poetry
in France (as in other countries) became increasingly personal, obscure, and
hard to understand. One consequence has been a steady diminishin g of the
reading public for poetry.
The most important postwar development in the theater came in the
1950s with the théâtre de l’absurde (theater of the absurd). Absurdist plays
point out the inadequacy of language for communication and the absence of
meaning in everyday life. To this end they use inconsistent and even
interchangeable characters, illogical or nonexistent plot development, and
parody of the conventions of theatre. La cantatrice chauve (1950; The Bald
Soprano, 1956) by Eugène Ionesco and En attendant Godot (1952; Waiting
for Godot, 1954) by Samuel Beckett are the masterpieces of the theater of
the absurd. Other authors of the movement were Arthur Adamov, Jacques
Audiberti, Jean Genet, and Jean Tardieu.
The term nouveau roman (new novel) ref ers to a group of novels written
in the 1950s. Common characteristics include the fragmentation of plot,
chronology, and characters; the use of innovative narrative techniques; the
blurring of boundaries between poetry, drama, and the novel; and the theme
of the incommunicability of language. Among the best of the new novels are
Molloy (1951; translated 1955) by Beckett, Moderato cantibile (1958;
translated 1960) by Marguerite Duras, Le planétarium (1959; The
Planetarium, 1960) by Nathalie Sarraute, La jalo usie (1957; Jealousy, 1959)
by Alain Robbe -Grillet, La modification (1957; A Change of Heart, 1959) by
Michel Butor, and La route des Flandres (1960; The Flanders Road, 1961)
by Claude Simon.
Much of modern French poetry, theater of the absurd, and the ne w
novel have in common a deep skepticism and even pessimism about the
possibility of knowing “reality,” especially through the use of language. In
many ways, therefore, 20th -century literature moved toward silence. Poetry
lost much of its audience. The the ater of the absurd, in contesting traditional
dramatic forms and emphasizing the inadequacy of language, left few
alternatives for the future, while the new novel proposed to put an end to the
novel as a method of storytelling. Raymond Queneau led a moveme nt in
reaction to this impasse, called Oulipo (for OUvroir de LItterature POtentielle;
in English, Workshop for Literary Potentiality). Oulipo suggested that strict
form and rules (often mathematical) be applied to literature, all inspiration
be sacrificed to calculation, and literature become a sort of intellectual game.

7.6. Literary Criticism
The crisis in literature, which had become evident by the 1960s,
resulted in a crisis for those who study it. The first battles of la nouvelle
critique (New Critic ism) began with the confrontation between academic or

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~ 27 ~ university criticism, best represented by Raymond Picard, and the New
Criticism, led at first by Roland Barthes. In understanding and interpreting
texts, university criticism gave importance to biograph ical, historical,
cultural, and literary historical information. The New Critics, on the other
hand, used methods and conceptual schemes from linguistics and the social
sciences (anthropology, sociology, psychology) to study texts. Literary
criticism then moved through a series of schools of thought in an effort to
use literature to examine the world in new ways. These schools include
structuralism, poststructuralism, semiotics, deconstruction, feminist
theory, and so -called queer theory. In some ways the l eading exponents of
these movements —Barthes, Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Jacques
Lacan, and Julia Kristeva —have replaced the creative writers of previous
centuries as the prominent literary figures of France.

7.7. Contemporary Fiction
Despite the tu multuous and pessimistic view of literature found in the
intellectual community, the general reading public in France still likes a good
novel, ensuring the continued vitality of French literature. Stendhal has
never been more popular. Marguerite Duras’s L 'Amant (1984; The Lover,
1985) sold more than 1.5 million copies in 18 months and has been
translated into about 20 languages. Michel Tournier's Le roi des aulnes
(1970; The Ogre, 1972) is recognized as a modern masterpiece, and an
admiring public eagerly embraced Diego et Frieda (Diego and Frida, 1993)
and other novels of Jean -Marie Gustave Le Clézio, as well as Vestiaire de
l'enfance (The Cloakroom of Childhood, 1989) by Patrick Modiano.
By the late 20th century, there were recurring themes in the novel : Life
is arbitrary and incoherent, memory unreliable, experience fragmented.
Claude Simon, winner of the 1985 Nobel Prize in literature, reflected this in
disrupted chronology and complex, multilayered narrative in earlier works
and in his late autobiogra phical novels Le Jardin des Plantes (1997; The
Jardin des Plantes, 2001) and Le tramway (2001; The Trolley, 2002). Georges
Perec, in La Vie mode d’emploi (1978; Life: A User’s Manual, 1987), dealt
with life’s incoherence by imposing an arbitrary, artificia l order on his
narrative, where numerical formulas dictate the book’s structure and
constitute its only certainties. Michel Tournier’s short stories, more
ambiguous than his novels, demonstrate the multiplicity of interpretations
open to a diversity of rea ders, the function of the author being to “present
figures the reader cannot quite grasp.” Similarly, Robert Pinget teased the
reader with ambiguities that are never resolved. Other novelists dealt more
conventionally with current social concerns —Hervé Gui bert with AIDS,
Annie Ernaux with the problems of gender, for example. But a playful quality
in language and narrative even extended to hitherto traditional genres, such
as the espionage, detective, and space adventure stories of writers such as
Jean Echen oz.

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~ 28 ~

BIBLIOGRA PHY

Brée, Germaine.Trans. Louis Guiney. Twentieth -Century French Literature.
University of Chicago Press, 1962, 1983. A general overview of modern
French writing.
France, Peter, ed. The New Oxford Companion to Literature in French. Oxford
University Press, 1995. Nearly 3,000 alphabetical entries about worldwide
French language writing.
Hollier, Denis, ed. A New History of French Literature. Harvard University Press,
1989, 1994. Essays by specialists presenting an overview of French writing
from 842 to the present.
Levi, Anthony. Guide to French Literature. 2 vols. St. James, 1992 -1994. An in –
depth study of major French writers and literary mov ements.Vol. 1:
Beginnings to 1789.Vol. 2: 1789 to the present.
Unwin, Timothy, ed. Cambridge Companion to the French Novel: From 1800 to the
Present. Cambridge University Press, 1997. Essays on aspects of the
modern French novel.